Considerable difficulty has been experienced in the removal of staples, paper clips and the like from carpets, particularly from carpets in offices where these metallic fastening devices fall in the normal course of the activities in the office. These metallic fasteners, particularly staples, tend to become embedded or caught in the pile of the carpeting to such an extent that even a strong, commercial vacuum cleaner cannot dislodge them.
In order to facilitate the removal of staples, paper clips and other similar metallic fasteners embedded or caught in carpeting, the carpet sweeper of the present invention has been devised which comprises, essentially, a housing or base member having a semi-cylindrical wire mesh fabric on the forward end of the housing and a wheel on the rear end thereof. A magnet is mounted on the base member between the mesh fabric and the wheel and a handle is connected to the base member for manually pushing the sweeper over the carpet. By this construction and arrangement, the wire mesh fabric first pulls or dislodges the metallic fasteners from the carpet to thereby facilitate the attraction of the fasteners against the surface of the magnet.
While magnetic floor sweepers have been proposed, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,426,795, wherein a magnet is mounted on a wheeled frame for picking up metallic debris from a floor, these types of sweepers are not satisfactory for removing metallic articles embedded or entangled in carpet piling since the magnetic force is not sufficient to dislodge the debris from the carpet.
The carpet sweeper of the present invention combines the mechanical action of the wire mesh fabric to first pull or dislodge the metallic fastener from the carpet, and the magnetic force of the magnet to attract the fastener away from the carpet.